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Monday, August 29, 2016

Review: Keep me in Mind by Jaime Reed

Publisher: Point
Publication Date: April 26, 2016
Rating: 4 stars

Ellia Dawson doesn't recognize the handsome boy who sits in tears by
her hospital bed. He claims he's her boyfriend, Liam. But to Ellia, he's
a stranger. She remembers her name. Her parents. Her best friend,
Stacey. But Liam is a total blank in her life.Liam McPherson is
devastated. His girlfriend, Ellia, suffered a terrible accident--maybe
because of him--and now she's lost her memory. But the harder Liam tries
to reach Ellia, and remind her of what they had, the more she pulls
away. As Ellia begins on the slow road to recovery, Liam begins work on a
secret project that he hopes will bring back the girl he loved.But can there ever be a future when the past is in pieces?

I think I saw this book in the back of another book, and as someone who's always looking for books featuring African American females in non urban settings (basically people I can pretend to be) the cover of this book is what did it for me. Ellia had an accident while running with her boyfriend and can't remember the last two years of her life. If that's not bad enough, during those two years, Ellia did a lot of changing. It was during those two years that she met and began dating her boyfriend Liam, it was when she decided she wanted to make and design clothes as opposed to being an engineer like her dad wanted her to, she had also began to sneak around and act in ways that no parent would approve of. What's interesting about this book is that, as Ellia begins to learn more about who she became over the two years that she didn't remember, she didn't the "old Ellia" and wasn't sure how to handle it.

Liam... that poor kid. I'm honestly not sure what to say about him. So let me sum it all up. This is a great book. Ellia and Liam are incredibly realistic characters. I like that their racial differences were acknowledged, but didn't take over the book (FINALLY!). Learning about Liam and Ellia's relationship from the book that Liam was writing was a nice twist although I wish we could have seen more though. SPOILER. We learned that at one point Ellia and a friend ran off to a frat party and had to call Liam to pick them up and I guess there were covered in feathers. And Ellia and Liam drove around with a homeless man in the trunk. Where were those stories!!!

Anyway. This is a good book. Everyone should read it. While the ending squished my heart a bit, I thought it was 100% appropriate, realistic, and very mature. This book is appropriate for younger teens. I would have no problems giving this book to a 6th grader.